This makes me feel like I'm going to laugh, curse and barf, all at the same time. I'm just sayin'.

Next year's campaign posters. And the ones for 2008.

And Grover Norquist's whatever-it-is is from -- some other universe, I think. I'd like to put him out in the Real World, where you might get fired because the boss's kid needs a job for his college buddy. Or to increase stock dividends.

It isn't from the one where my best friends are working guard jobs/temporary jobs to make ends meet, because the fields they have experience in are basically Not Here Any More -- one is a computer game programmer. "How can I compete with a programmer in China who is paid $4 an hour, with government-paid health benefits?" ... I work contract, twelve months on and six months off, because the company where I work won't hire enough people to do the job properly, and contractors are (as far as I can tell from down here) on the list of people that HR is told not to hire. (I love the work, it suits me down to the ground, and I would take a pay cut to do it permanently. This does not get through to the suits who make these decisions, and they're at least three levels up from my boss.)

John Edwards gives a good sermon on Two Americas at TPMCafe. Following it is a comment by 'idook' that really hits the nail on the head:

Your tax cuts at work. The federal government has finally been drowned in the bathtub of New Orleans.

May already be too late. Contracts for cleanup and damage assessment have been given to Halliburton.

May already be too late. Contracts for cleanup and damage assessment have been given to Halliburton.

WHAT? *sputter incoherently* Link?

AMERICAblog quoting Houston Chronicle:

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.

How much oil are they going to evacuate and house?

actually one of the theories I have on this is the Republicans want to get rid of FEMA altogether. Thus by showing FEMA as ineffective they can destroy it.
This is actually one of their common government destroying ploys, make the government services ineffective due to lack of funds and then argue for lowering taxes because government services are ineffective.

campaign poster. definitely.

Another entry in the "no one expected it" lottery:

Poor, Black, and Left Behind

Mike Davis
September 24, 2004

The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of
Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom
Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white
people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the
old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left
behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks
and aging tenements to face the watery wrath...

I guess George doesn't read Mother Jones. Pity.

bryan's right. That's exactly what happens. I used to work for a national labour organisation. After years of ferociously cutting it down, the government complained that it wasn't doing its job, and canned it - and me, and many others.

This is, of course, nothing, nothing, to the results you see now. Please, I am commenting on a process, not in any way comparing my sufferings, which were picayune, to those occurring in New Orleans.

ps. I've been there. Just another tourist. It was wonderful.

I have the same theory as Bryan. (and by "theory" I mean hypothesis. I haven't done the necessary research work, but, judging from observable phenomena...)

"See this Window I threw a hammer through? It clearly doesn't keep the rain out, so I suggest we get rid of it entirely, by hiring a contractor to board it up. By the way, my brother just happens to be a contractor..."

Here's a note from a fireman who doesn't plan to forget.

And here's the rest of their Katrina coverage.

Jim? Anyone else knowledgeable? Is this a reliable site?

(Also, Jim, or John Ford: Red, yellow, green, black--that's the "card trick", right?)

Firehouse Magazine is the real deal.

Red, Yellow, Green, and Black are triage categories. Red is the highest priority for treatment and transport. Black is the lowest.

Contracts for cleanup and damage assessment have been given to Halliburton.

You know, the "my country's been hijacked" feeling is worse now than it was in the days after the election.

Thanks, Jim.

I was thinking about John Ford's The Last Hot Time and the scene where the EMT triages a room of people using playing cards. He thinks back on being told at a disaster:

"Hey, friend, let me show you a card trick."

I was pretty sure that was it, but I'm ignorant sometimes and wanted to be sure.

Something prescient (found on Disturbing Auctions, for an Auction of a rare Kipling imprint on e-bay). See last line for advice.

Rudyard Kipling, 1924. Dead Statesman (#4851)

"I could not dig, I dare not rob

Therefore I lied to please the mob

Now all my lies are proved untrue

And I must face the men I slew

What tale will serve me now among

Mine angry and defrauded young?"

recite this, graffiti this, blog this poem. There is someone it applies to.

Is the New Orleans catastrophe changing the political landscape? Holy crap.
Jonah "Doughy Pantload" Goldberg writes in The freaking Corner:

THE CONTINUING CRISIS [Jonah Goldberg]

As I think about what the finger-pointers are likely to say in the aftermath of all this it's hard not to credit some of their complaints. For years, Democrats complained that we needed to spend more on "first-responders." I took this for what it often was: an attempt to pad municipal budgets with pork. But, one must concede it wasn't entirely about that either. And while it's likely this disaster would have presented many if not most of the challenges we're seeing this week, even if all that money had been spent as the Democrats wanted, it remains hard to dispute that it would have been better spent than much of the garbage in recent budgets.

And that's the point: The choice isn't between a lean, fiscally responsible, Republican budget and a porcine Democratic budget which included money for first responders. The Republican Congress has proven to be just about as disgusting in its spending as a Democratic Congress might have been. Sure, perhaps Democrats would have spent a bit more, but Republicans are supposed to be against bloated government and the stealing of tax dollars for personal projects and missions. So whatever pennies we've hypothetically saved with Republicans, their hypocrisy and betrayal of principle more than compensates.

So the question is, would the money have been better spent if the Republicans hadn't gotten their way? And, though it sickens me to say so, that is at best an open question. I have the utmost faith in the kleptocratic and dysfunctional governments of New Orleans and Louisiana to waste and steal money. But, we were supposed to be preparing --at the national level -- for a major terrorist attack for the last four years. I just don't see much evidence of that preparation. Congress re-assembled lickity-split to deal with Terri Schiavo -- a decision that didn't and does not bother me the way it bothers some. But however you define the issues involved in that case, in terms of real human suffering they are very hard to stack-up against what's happened in New Orleans. Congress should have convened yesterday and rescinded the highway bill. It should have broken-open the farm bill like a piņata and reallocated the monies therein.

For supporters of the war, this spectacle is going to be particularly hard to accomodate because it is in the interests of the political classes to keep their pork and it is in the interests of the antiwar left to frame this as a choice between Baghdad and New Orleans. That should not be the choice. The choice should be between the highway bill, ag subsidies and the like. The Don Young Highway should at least be renamed to the "Go Suck Eggs New Orleans Highway."

Wow.

Paula: Dead Statesman is part of Kipling's "Epitaphs of the War" (1919). It's worth reading the rest; "Common Form" is probably also appropriate.

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied

You might also want to remember this...

[...]

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here."

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.

[...]

Freedom is untidy. Stuff happens. But... when government is cut down to the size where Grover Norquist can drown it in a bathtub, only then will we be free to live our lives and do wonderful things.

BLECH!

Oh, j h, I feel your pain--and so does MaxSpeak:

STUFF HAPPENS: AN UPDATE Updated by the Sandwichman

Saturday, April 12, 2003/Thursday, September 1, 2005

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in New Orleans was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as hurricane and flood survivors adjusted to life without water, food, electricity, sanitation, shoes, diapers, shelter, transportation, levees and public order.

He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in "Baghdad by the bayou," which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was "part of the price" for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here..."

Can you spot the transition from truth to fiction?

Yes I think it is changing the political landscape, and I think the GOP have some real problems in the coming little time, these problems are:

1. continuing problems in Iraq will get scrutinized more
2. The death toll from this going to be horrendous.
3. if another significant hurricane starts moving people are gonna freak
4. I think Fitzgerald is gonna come with something in Plame, and nobody is gonna be in a mood to let them skate.
5. Abu Ghraib photos could be released, and combine that with aftermath of New Orleans.... the Republican party will be broken.

Nanny may not know best, But she has her uses

And here it is:

In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."

the answer is,... a CLOSED door hearing from this adminstrations cabinet.....i'd almost sacrifice my freedom to be a fly on the wall ....
it will be, the greatest story ever told,
gezz they've got it looking like Iraq already,..wonder if they think the residents oppsss insurgents are going to attact them with roadside bombs and pick up trucks with machine guns,...12 to 15 armed personel standing at checkpoints while people suffer,.... calous calous unforgivabily calous

perhaps they should hold the hearings in the Superdome and think about the long term implications of the Roberts nominations' merits as well, while they sit in the s*itty mess they created

Grosser NoseTwist can't very well "drown it in a bathtub", can he, since he and his buddies have done such a fine job of FLUSHING it down the toilet!

The photo in the original post is gone. Lost in the great database meltdown in May?